Archive for January, 2007
Faculty podcasting can be a great way to promote academic expertise to external audiences. As reported in "History Teacher Becomes Podcast Celebrity" published today in The New York Times, Lars Brownworth, a history teacher at a boarding school in Long Island, NY, the Stony Brook School, has become a podcasting success story with his series about the Byzantine Empire reaching 140,000 listeners from around the world: In barely 18 months, Mr. Brownworth’s podcast, “12 Byzantine Rulers”, has become one of the phenomena of the podcasting world. A survey of 1,200 years of rather abstruse history, starting with Diocletian in 284 and finishing...
Read MoreAs announced earlier this morning, the Division of Student Affairs at NC State held, this afternoon, a very interesting panel discussion titled "The Facebook Phenomenon." The 2-hour webcast was really good (kudos to the AV, IT and Web teams!) and will be available online later this week. In the meantime, you can have a look at the PowerPoint presentation used during the discussion. "The Facebook Phenomenon" at NC State - The panelists As the headline of this post hinted, the organizers have even invited anybody interested in further discussion about the topic to join the "Facebook Phenomenon" group they created on... Facebook. What...
Read MoreIf you have a bit of time this afternoon (or can multi-task in front of your computer), make sure you watch the 2-hour webcast of "The Facebook Phenomenon," a panel talk organized by the division of Student Affairs at NC State University and scheduled to start at 2PM ET: Facebook. MySpace. Friendster. These social networking sites and others dominate the culture of today's college students, and remain a mystery for many faculty and staff who serve those students. Join us as we explore the "Facebook Phenomenon" and its impact on our students and our institutions. Those of us working in higher...
Read MoreI love conferences. A conference is a great way to learn and share while meeting interesting people. I wish I could go to more... I've been invited to present at 2 conferences this year (more details about these when everything is confirmed). In the meantime, here is my short list for higher ed conferences to watch in 2007: EduWeb: July 22-24, 2007 in Baltimore, MD As announced a few months ago on this blog, EduWeb Conference Director Shelley Wetzel should offer this year again another great conference. The call for proposals will be open online from February 5 to March 16, 2007. HighEdWebDev: October...
Read MoreHow can you convey academic expertise in a 2-minute online video? Stick to this one-question interview format used by Duke University's Office of News & Communication. In this video available on YouTube and titled "Duke University Professor Explains Why So Many Lemur Species," Anne Yoder, the director of Duke Lemur Center, answers a question pertaining to what is a current issue in her field. It's short, to the point and done on location in front of a few representatives of the lemur population. The one-question interview definitely works well to promote the academic expertise of professors as well as their ability...
Read MoreAccording to the 2007 Horizon report, while user-created content and social networking are already facts of life on campuses across the world, mobile phones and virtual worlds will also be widely used in higher education by 2010. Released today by The New Media Consortium and the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative (ELI), an EDUCAUSE program, this report is definitely a must-read as it offers a good picture of the current trends and technologies that are going to deeply impact the world of higher education: "To create the 2007 Horizon Report, the 27 members of the 2007 Advisory Board engaged in a comprehensive review and...
Read MoreI saw this video at the CASE conference back in September. It was part of the keynote presentation by Joe Hice, UF Associate Vice President for Marketing & Public Relations. At that time, I really thought it was a very good candidate for a viral video campaign and mentioned it to Joe: it's funny, smart and informative. This 10-minute video includes a movie trailer as well as the making of "The Undergraduate." It describes the whole college experience at the University of Florida in a very engaging way by following the adventures of an... undergraduate. The cast is composed of UF...
Read MoreWhat a great and different way to promote an academic department to the campus community and the world! I know, I know, this first line isn't very informative, but I really think West Virginia University is defintely onto something with the blog recently launched by its Philosophy department and its Web Services: The Question. And, actually I'm not the only one as the blog is highlighted in the Jan. 22 issue of Sports Illustrated. Yes, you've read correctly Sports Illustrated and a philosophy blog... This academic department blog invites its readers to answer questions of the philosophical kind. And, because VWU went (and...
Read MoreEven if we cross their path everyday on campus, it's sometimes easy to forget what makes our college students tick. I'm currently doing a bit of digging for a project of mine and thought I would share with you three interesting resources about young adults: USA Today Generation Next Index I've seen a lot of stories in USA Today about young adults, but just realized today that these were all part of a series. In this convenient index, you'll find a lot of articles that should help you learn more about this generation. The News Hour Generation Next Website Here you'll find videos...
Read MoreThis is probably one of my crazy Tuesday ideas, but let's see... This morning, I came across (via Will Richardson) TV Jersey, an initiative by a "group of writers, photographers, graphic artists and editors at The Star-Ledger in Newark." Their mission? To bodly go where no New Jerseyans has gone before... "New Jersey needs a television station to call its own. Programmed by New Jerseyans, for New Jerseyans. TVJersey has no broadcast towers, no satellites. It doesn’t even have a studio. But it has you. And what you produce, we’ll promote." This team of newspaper folks has decided to launch an online user-generated...
Read MoreAs most of you know, I’ve recently conducted a survey to get some feedback about this blog. Between December 1st, 2006 and January 8, 2007, 77 readers (about 3 times more than the previous year) took the time to answer 10 questions. With the 50,670 (about 5 times more than the previous year) unique visitors this blog received in 2006, this survey isn't probably statistically representative. But, it definitely gives a good picture of this blog’s most involved and active readers. So let's find out who you are and what you think about this blog: 1. What's your position? Are you a... Web professional (Webmaster,...
Read MoreFacebook has just introduced its mobile service: "Facebook was invented to make sharing information with your friends easier and better. Mobile phones were invented for pretty much the same reason. People needed an easier and better way to get in touch with each other, and mobile phones made it happen. We pondered this for a bit, quickly realized that pondering wasn't making anything awesome happen, and then started building Facebook Mobile. We're now happy to report that Facebook Mobile has services available for every Facebook user with a phone." Available from the Facebook section called "My Mobile" - only accessible to register users,...
Read MoreSorry for the would-be smart post title - couldn't help myself ;-) As confirmed in a post titled "Scholar's in open beta!" by Karen Gage on the company's blog, Educate/Innovate, Blackboard has quietly launched in public beta a social bookmarking web service for its online learning platform clients: "What makes Scholar different from other social bookmarking services you may have used or heard of (e.g. del.icio.us) is how it works in an education setting. Scholar has all the typical features you'd expect from a social bookmarking service (tagging, tag clouds, RSS feeds, a bookmarklet for browser integration, etc.), but we wanted...
Read MoreAfter proceeding to the draw, I can now announce the name of the winner of the $30 gift certificate: Edward Terry from Austin Community College in Austin, TX. I would like to thank all the survey participants for taking the time to answer my questions. I'll share the main findings of the survey in a future post.
Long time, no post. So, first let me wish you a happy new year. According to "Social Networking Websites and Teens: An Overview," the latest Pew Internet Research Project Data Memo published yesterday, it looks like 2007 could be the year of the social networking websites. I know I've been saying it for a while, but it doesn't hurt to back it up with fresh statistics, which is exactly what this report brings to us. The telephone survey was conducted last October and November among a national sample of 935 youths ages 12 to 17. They were asked how and why they use...
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